My one and only trip so far to a German dentist was pretty baffling. The local Zahnarzt gave my gaping maw the onceover, then stuck me in an x-ray booth with a camera that twirled around my head, producing a panorama of my entire piehole. (My dentist in the US is still cramming those gag-inducing x-ray slides down her patients’ throats.) He quickly glanced over my landscape of soda-stained chicklets, gave me a literal thumbs-up, and sent me on my way.
I was confused. Where was the stern lecture about proper flossing technique? The horror stories about root infections? The bone-chilling warnings about untreated decay leading to THCI*? This guy didn’t even pressure me to schedule a cleaning. My wisdom teeth, still living in my jaws because they are the Samson-like source of my wisdom, have been the subject of considerable panic with threats of my early demise in every dentist’s office I’d been in so far – this guy didn’t seem to care. It was almost as if he believed that I was taking care of my own teeth just fine and that there were no immediate and cripplingly-expensive malformations in my headbone. And like most hypochondriacs, my reaction to being told everything was fine was to feel cheated.
The American expects the upsell, the add-ons, the inducement of fear to inspire upgrades, extended warranties, or referrals to pricier specialists in the “network.” We expect this mafia-style shakedown in our business affairs the way an Indonesian pimp expects a john to haggle. American dentists are particularly gifted in this brand of persuasion, given their clientele’s natural terror of this medieval savagery marketed as medical procedure. We agree to painful surgeries and extractions in the short term to avoid the worse treatment they promise later on. Pay up now or you’ll get it worse than just in the kneecaps.
This is part and parcel to the American consumer experience, the general acceptance that every encounter, whether with panhandler or pancake waitress, is probably a screw job. And while it’s understood that a lack of consumer protections in the US mean that real estate agents, military recruiters, auto mechanics, software peddlers, insurance brokers, phone service providers, lawyers, junk food purveyors, and pharmaceutical manufactures are all intent on swindling the masses, dentistry is one of the few American exchanges by which people are conned into debt through promises of intense pain and potential disfigurement. Your car loan may have come with hidden interest fees of 47% but at least they provided a ’98 Chevy Malibu instead of fracturing your jaw.
It's difficult for an American to loosen his red, white, and blue sphincter after a lifetime of being probed by the professionals. It’s hard to accept that, not only are German merchants and medical experts not legally allowed to siphon my savings through fine-print chicanery, they may not even want to. Better still, my dentist here in Wuppertal may have no hidden desire to apply unnecessary bloodletting at all.
And yes, my darling Americans, with your History Channel superstitions and bigotries, I know right now you’ve got some hilarious lampshade reference ready for the comment box. But my continent flopping has revealed to me over the years that prejudices do not die so much as expand and contract. No, German doctors are not Mengeles, and not all Dr. Mengeles are German.
Which brings me to my childhood dentist, Dr. Needle. Yes, Needle was his actual name. I like to think he chose his profession to best honor the surname bestowed upon him, like our local proctologist Dr. Rump (also real). “They laughed at me in dental school, but soon the world will tremble at the power of Dr. Needle!” – that sort of thing. And tremble we did. In spite of the doctor’s generally relaxed sink-side manner, you can well imagine that a child’s inherent fear of the dentist is turned up to eleven when being told that Dr. Needle is on his way with his sharpest tools. How I wish I had kept one of his complimentary toothbrushes with his name stamped on them.
Dr. Needle remained my dentist into my adulthood. I suppose that, in spite of any childhood misgivings I had about him, I appreciated the conceptual purity of his branding too much to patronize the competition. I enjoyed telling people the name of my dentist. And so I was especially amused to see, on a checkup visit in my mid-twenties, that Dr. Needle had commissioned a local artist to help further promote his glorious moniker. In the waiting room stood a metal sculpture, comprised of welded tin and assorted scrap, portraying “Dr. Needle” as a demonic android, threatening visitors with giant pliers and hypodermic. It was stunning.
While the hygienist was cleaning my teeth, I mentioned to her that I found the sculpture in the waiting room to be pretty intense, and that it was probably frightening the children. This was intended to convey, of course, that I greatly admired the artwork. At once, she got up from her chair and left the room, reappearing a minute later with the legendary Dr. Needle himself in the doorway.
“Tell him what you just told me,” she demanded.
“Well,” I offered humbly. “I was just saying that your sculpture out there is pretty scary-looking, and it’s probably freaking out the kids who already afraid of going to the dentist.”
Dr. Needle responded only with a light chuckle. He just laughed. But it would be wrong to characterize this as an evil laugh, like a cartoon super villain. It was a laugh of deep satisfaction from a man pleased that his efforts had made the intended impact. This was a man who felt deep pride in his work, a man who was deeply and soulfully satisfied in having committed his life to the physical and psychological torture of children. Indeed, of children of all ages.
And it was that moment that I realized that Dr. Needle was, in fact, Satan. And like anyone who has met Satan at some point, I was deeply impressed.
*Total-Head Cave-In
(And let’s not forget Ashley’s website, jam-packed with portraits and other drawings, his portrait and art-rant blog, The Perps, his highly-affordable prints and books currently available, his eagerness for your portrait commission, and his contact email, thrdgll@gmail.com, where he longs to hear from you.)